


Lost and Found

by midnightflame



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Character Death, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, How memory haunts, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-07
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-10-16 00:32:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10560362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightflame/pseuds/midnightflame
Summary: Keith deals with the loss of Shiro and gets comfort in the ghost of all that he had been





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Snowisdelight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowisdelight/gifts).



> So, got the fic prompt for ghost sheith from @snowisdelight and this is kind of where my mind took me. I know you liked the previous pieces I had written in this style so I thought I would revisit them for you <3

I think I’ve gone a little crazy. 

Or maybe it’s that I lost some part of myself. I think that must be it because the day he fell something came and cut out my heart. I think it put a black hole in the space where it should have been, this thing that just keeps devouring all the better parts of me and every so often it spits out this dark matter essence of sheer pain, as if to remind me that from the very best of us the very worst can come too. 

I can’t see it. I can’t touch it. But I know it’s there because it lays to waste the place my heart called home every single night.

But you see, there have been these moments when it all falls away. Where every bit of blood is called back into my veins, leaving wounds without the red to announce the depths of their devastation. Where every breath is pulled from the brink of breaking, flowing right and calm once again. And I begin to remember the shape of my heart, and how it had once been whole. 

I swear I can hear him telling me that in these moments – that I still have it there, beating within my chest, and that it is still mine, still his, still ours. It’s like the world has gone silent, blissfully, beautifully silent. And this weight settles around my shoulders, and a warmth wraps itself around my back, and it feels like there is a place to ground myself once again. 

And then those words come out soft as snowfall against my ear, with this subtle little curve of lips that when I close my eyes, I can see in all its perfect fullness. And I do have a heart in those moments, because something pulses suddenly where it should reside, where I last remember his hand pressing, and it comes with this sharp ache that cuts into my lungs and puts the tremble to my breath all over again. 

Every beat is set to the rhythm of _I miss you_ in those moments. And I think he can feel that, because it’s like laughter sliding against my ear in response, and it is warm and gentle, and it is telling me that everything will be okay, and I want to tell him that it won’t be, not entirely, because he isn’t here, that there’s no skin beneath my fingertips and scars for me to trace as he tells me of all the ways we are complete, and because of that I can’t rightly argue this matter with him.

He can’t just shut up my insecurities with a kiss this time.

But I can still feel him. You know, they got it all wrong back on Earth, talking of how the cold and the dark define lost souls. He’s not lost, but I am, and I think that’s why he is here. And he is as warm as the memory of morning sunshine in the desert, gilding the landscape rose gold, whispering of all the promise held there, even in a world as desolate as mine. 

Right now, I want to say my world is just that empty. But then I imagine the arms around my waist, and I lean back into the presence of all that he has ever been to me. And in the dark of my room, memory carves for me the image of his figure there, with a history of pain etched across his nose and that grin that burns bright enough to spite it. 

I give him the smile I know he’s asking for as I tip my head up. I still love how easily I could nestle right beneath his chin.

_Now, there’s something worth remembering._

His voice had such a low cadence to it in moments like this, a life that only I ever saw blossom in the sound of it. Rich in all the ways love makes a man. I hear it now, this deep heartfelt murmur. Again and again, reminding me he is mine, always had been, always would be. That is something not even the dying beat of a heart can erase. 

I remember those fading echoes, slow and slow and slower still. I can hear it now, in the quiet of this room. 

And despite it, there is still that spill of laughter against my ear, asking me why I am caught up in that death-march rhythm when there is one full of life right here. A tap, the light rap of metal against my chest, and below it, my heart repeats the sound.

Again and again.

And he tells me that not everything lost will be found, that not everything unseen has gone missing.

That there is eternity in the promises he had made to me.


End file.
